et more touching
was the great admiral's inexorable treatment of his favourite brother
Humphrey, who, in a moment of extreme agitation, had failed in his
duty. The captains went to Blake in a body, and argued that Humphrey's
fault was a neglect rather than a breach of orders, and suggested his
being sent away to England till it was forgotten. But Blake was
outwardly unmoved, though inwardly his bowels did yearn over his
brother, and sternly said: 'If none of you will accuse him, I must be
his accuser.' Humphrey was dismissed from the service. It is affecting
to know how painfully Blake missed his familiar presence during his
sick and lonely passage homewards, when the hand of death was upon
that noble heart. To Humphrey he bequeathed the greater part of his
property.

In the rare intervals of private life which he enjoyed on shore, Blake
also compels our sincere regard. When released for awhile from
political and professional duties, he loved to run down to Bridgewater
for a few days or weeks, and, as his biographer says, with his chosen
books, and one or two devout and abstemious friends, to indulge in all
the luxuries of seclusion. 'He was by nature self-absorbed and
taciturn. His morning was usually occupied with a long walk, during
which he appeared to his simple neighbours to be lost in profound
thought, as if working out in his own mind the details of one of his
great battles, or busy with some abstruse point of Puritan theology.
If accompanied by one of his brothers, or by some other intimate
friend, he was still for the most part silent. Always good-humoured,
and enjoying sarcasm when of a grave, high class, he yet never talked
from the loquacious instinct, or encouraged others so to employ their
time and talents in his presence. Even his lively and rattling brother
Humphrey, his almost constant companion when on shore, caught, from
long habit, the great man's contemplative and self-communing gait and
manner; and when his friends rallied him on the subject in
after-years, he used to say, that he had caught the trick of silence
while walking by the admiral's side in his long morning musings on
Knoll Hill. A plain dinner satisfied his wants. Religious
conversation, reading, and the details of business, generally filled
up the evening until supper-time; after family prayers--always
pronounced by the general himself--he would invariably call for his
cup of sack and a dry crust of bread, and while he drank two or th